Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican comments have made him few (no?) friends in America’s Hispanic community. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that other than a few Fox News-watching racist Republican trolls, his (unfounded) remarks seem low, vile and ridiculous to just about everyone. He’s a silly, grotesque man, full of himself and… he’s just a shithead. Fuck Donald Trump.

No… fuck his hair.

5 Rabbit Cerveceria is a Chicago-area microbrewery that had been supplying the signature beer for the ritzy Rebar in Chicago’s Trump Tower. The owners are Latino and have decided to sever ties with the loathsome billionaire. Now the Trump brew they had left over has been renamed “Chinga Tu Pelo”—which translates as “Fuck your hair”—in honor of the GOP Presidential and loudmouthed comb-over casualty.

“We would be doing an injustice to the community we serve (and live in) by engaging in business with someone who does not accept our role in society and expresses a rhetoric of hate and ignorance towards us,” Araya wrote in a statement to WBEZ Monday.

“On a personal level, if I did, one of the things that scares me the most is sending the wrong message to my daughters. We are active members of this immigrant community and we need to stand up for ourselves, and more importantly, for those who do not have the voice or means to do so. The very foundation of the United States of America was built on acceptance and inclusion. That is what drew us here, and that´s what why we feel so strongly about this.”

“As a company, an integral part of our vision reads that we are ‘not only based in, but also look to promote a strong and positive image of Latin America, its heritage and people.’

It would be hypocritical of us to sustain the relationship.”

Right on! Chinga that moron’s pelo!

The giant mattress company Serta yesterday announced that it too would be severing ties with the GOP’s lumbering, out of control Frankenstein monster. Recently NBC and Univision both dumped their ties with the toxic Trump brand.

This self-immolation—Trump’s moronic inferno—is spectacular to watch, but I DO hope the thick-fingered vulgarian makes it to the first Republican debate in August and beyond. Look at how much damage he’s done to himself in such a short time and just imagine what he can do for the GOP!

I really loathe the idea of “Darwin Awards.” In addition to being utterly corny (and scientifically inaccurate), I usually find the idea both smug and unkind. For who among us has not pulled a total boner move that may very well have ended our life, right then and there? This is not to say I’m above laughing at an absurd, untimely death. On the contrary, some people are so awful, they inspire a fuck-youlogy, and I’ll be damned if I deny myself that pleasure. I can’t think of a more deserving candidate than Christina Bond—biker, Evangelical and Republican Precinct Delegate for Saint Joseph Charter Precinct 1 in Michigan, who fatally shot herself in the eye recently, adjusting the gun in her bra-holster.

The folks over at Raw Story noted that her Facebook page was heavy on the Bible quotes and Republican boosterism, with some choice words against Obama and the protestors at Ferguson. Her status after winning the election spoke of needing “people involved in taking our country back,” though she failed to mention if “taking our country back” would require firearms.

Christina was born in Niles at Pawating Hospital on Oct. 8, 1959, to George Blake and Inez Brock. She was a member and administrator to Road to Life Church for 15 years. Christina left the safety of home and joined the United States Navy out of high school. She served two tours and was an active MP (military police) officer. As an active member of the Christian Motorcycle Association, Christina was “on fire for the Lord.” She often served at the Berrien County jail in ministry as well as being an active member on her church’s prayer team. Christina was recently elected as a precinct delegate for St. Joseph Charter Township Precinct 1. Always physically fit, Christina took home the 2013 Miss Michigan Figure Overall Championship. She was a light to the world and will be missed.

I added the link to her church for a point of cultural reference. The late Ms. Bond adhered to a pretty old-time religion; as someone who grow up around them, I can tell you that extreme conservatism and religious zealotry are pretty par for the course with Christian bikers. In fact, I feel quite the involuntary kinship with Bond—as if it was one of my very own dumb redneck aunts who shot herself in the eye. (She is not to be confused however, with my kind and reasonable redneck aunts, all of whom are perfectly delightful).

To be perfectly honest, I thought the biggest surprise in all of this is that she lasted this long—if she was stupid enough to keep a loaded gun in her tits, she probably didn’t wear a helmet either.

I don’t know who the target market for a velvet painting of Pat Buchanan is supposed to be. Extremist right wingers aren’t known for their adeptness at parsing irony, and it seems doubtful that patrician right wingers would darken their homes with an objet with cultural connotations so déclassé. And I can’t see why even the most thrift-store hardened ironist would want such a thing around—I’ve harbored plenty of ironic art in my day, and while if I actually saw a velvet Pat Buchanan hanging somewhere I would surely say “WHOA, AWESOME,” not in a million lifetimes would I want that pasty, jowly, vulgar, hateful, fascist walrus staring down at me from the walls of my own home day in and day out.

And yet, the velvet Buchanan is a real thing that really exists and someone who is so inclined could, in principle, actually own it. In fact, Pat is one of many right wing icons whose velvety vileness is enshrined and sold at velvetpaintings.com (“Quality you can FEEL”), though the list of honorees on the site skids to a halt during the George W Bush administration.

I LOOOOOOVE how Newt Gingrich comes off looking like a sentient, murderous ventriloquist dummy in a cheap movie.

Please don’t claim anything changes if one party or the other is in the majority. Anyone clinging to that fantasy is delusional.

If you really think it matters which political party controls the U.S. Senate, please answer these questions. Don’t worry, they’re not that difficult:

1. Will U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast change from being an incoherent pastiche of endless war and Imperial meddling? Please answer with a straight face. We all know the answer is that it doesn’t matter who controls the Senate, Presidency or House of Representatives, nothing will change.

2. Will basic civil liberties be returned to the citizenry? You know, like the cops are no longer allowed to steal your cash when they stop you for a broken tail light and claim the cash was going to be used for a drug deal.

Or some limits on domestic spying by Central State agencies. You know, basic civil liberties as defined by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. constitution.

Don’t make me laugh—you know darned well that it doesn’t matter who controls the Senate, Presidency or House of Representatives, nothing will change.

3. Will the predatory, parasitic policies of the Federal Reserve that virtually everyone from the Wall Street Journal to what little remains of the authentic Left understands has greatly increased income and wealth inequality be reined in? Please don’t claim either party has any will or interest in limiting the Fed’s rapacious financialization. There is absolutely no evidence to support such a claim—it is pure wishful thinking.

4. Will the steaming pile of profiteering, corruption, waste, fraud and ineptitude that is Sickcare in the U.S. be truly reformed so its costs drop by 50% to match what every other developed democracy spends per person on universal healthcare? It doesn’t matter if ObamaCare is repealed or not; that monstrosity was simply another layer of bureaucratic waste on an already hopelessly dysfunctional system.

If you answer “yes,” please run a body scan on yourself to detect the biochips that were implanted while you voted Demopublican.

5. Will the influence of Big Money be well and truly banned from politics? If you answer yes, please pick up your tin-foil hat at the door.

6. Will the incentives in the Status Quo be reset to punish rapacious financialization and gaming the system and reward productive investment and labor? Before you answer, check out who’s buttering the Senators’ bread. Hint: Wall Street does not qualify as productive unless we’re talking about the production of life-draining parasites. Virtually none of the vast armies of skimmers and scammers, from those pursuing bogus disability claims to lobbyist leeches, will suffer any consequence.

Moral hazard is the Status Quo’s Prime Directive.

7. Will anything be done to dismantle the Neofeudal Debt-Serfdom known as student loans? You are delusional if you think either party has any interest in limiting the predation of an academic Upper Caste that came to do good and stayed to do well.

8. Will any prudent assessment be made of unaffordable weapons systems like the F-35 Lightning—$1.5 trillion and counting for aircraft that will soon be matched by drones that cost a fraction of the F-35’s $200 million a piece price tag? No way—parts of those insanely costly jets are made in dozens of states, so the pork is well-distributed. Never mind the plane is lemon, built to fight the wars of the past. It’s jobs, Baby—that’s all that counts. Never mind the $1.5 trillion—we can always borrow another couple trillion—the Fed promised us.

Do you really think the Senate controlled by either party will ask why the F-35’s price tag dropped to $120 million from $200 million? That’s easy—the revised estimate left out the engine and avionics. They’ll be added back in after the Senate approves open-ended funding.

If none of these key dynamics will change, you got nothing. Please don’t claim anything changes if one party or the other is in the majority. Anyone clinging to that fantasy is delusional.

These are the words of Walt Bayes, who is running for Governor of Idaho on the Republican ticket. His primary political goal is “to stop abortion.” The other crazy onstage is biker Harley Brown, whose charming website contains carefully curated list of “Harleyisms.” A sampling:

I was preparing my income tax and thought “thank God we don’t get all the government we pay for!”

Burn up all of the gas - That’s the American way - God Bless America

Register Communists, not firearms. That means domestic enemies of the United States Constitution such as Bloomberg, Schumer and Pelosi

A while back I visited Israel and discovered the REAL reason Jewish men get circumcised - Because Jewish women won’t touch anything that is not at least 20% off

Loud pipes save lives

Gun control means hitting your target. (Editor’s note: I recommend “Gun control is accomplished by a firm grip with both hands”)

Democrats piss me off

The difference between the IRS and a whore is that a whore will quit screwing you after your dead

Why wasn’t Jesus born in Poland? They couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin.

And my personal favorite:

Riding a Jap bike is like f_cking a faggot I guess it feels OK until somebody sees you doing it & you sure as hell don’t tell your buddies about it the next day.

In the words of Harley Brown, “you have your choice folks—a cowboy, a curmudgeon, a biker, or a normal guy.” Choose wisely, Idaho. Choose wisely.

What does a political party do when it can’t win on personality and it can’t win on the issues? That’s the problem faced by the Republican Party these days. The most visible Republicans in the last year have been Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, and John Boehner, whose dyspeptic crimson mug grimaced at every positive-sounding notion President Obama uttered during last week’s State of the Union address. To judge from that spectacle, Republicans get queasy at the thought of such radical notions as food stamps and equal pay for women.

Meanwhile, it’s been a truism for many years now that the Republicans have had to overcome perceived deficits on the issues. My favorite example of this came around the 2004 election, when polls revealed that Bush voters (that is, people who liked Bush and his issue set) were prone to attributing positions to Bush himself that were markedly more liberal than anything Bush himself believed. Here, look:

In particular, majorities or Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In August, two thirds of Bush supporters also said they believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC), although in the latest poll, that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority, even though Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the most widely watched nationally televised debate of the campaign in late September.

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush.

The point is that conservatives frequently have to pretend to hold liberal—or at least moderate—positions in order to win national election. The Democrats currently face little pressure of that sort.

We can argue about which party’s platform has a better purchase on the issues; what’s salient here that the Republicans are the ones behaving as if they have to game the system in order to win. Republican attempts to limit voter participation in the 2012 election were well documented and even, perversely, may have actually contributed to Democratic gains due to the outraged reaction on the part of Democratic constituents, especially black Democrats.

Now there’s a brand new bit of GOP bullshittery to reckon with—Republican websites designed to look like the web presence of Democrats running for Congress. Shane Goldmacher at National Journalcaught it in December; Alex Pareene at Salonwrote about it earlier today.

The websites have targeted Amanda Renteria (CA), Martha Roberston (NY), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Domenic Recchia (NY), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Nick Rahall (WV), Alex Sink (FL), and John Tierney (MA), among others. In each case, somebody—presumably the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), but we’ll get to that in a moment—has taken out an apparently “official” pro-candidate website like every candidate for Congress has, except that once you get past the deceptive optics, the content of the site is stridently hostile to the candidate whose name is on the website, and donations are solicited to defeat the candidate. (I know just what you’re thinking: At least it didn’t say, “Click here to donate to the candidate!” with the money getting funneled to his or her opponent. Although from a semiotic point of view, it kinda does say that.)

As to the authorship: if you look at, say, http://martha-robertson.com, you’ll see at the bottom the following text: “Contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes. Paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. www.nrcc.org.” If you click on “Donate” (just above the text “Fed up with Martha Robertson? – Sign up Today”), you are directed to https://www.nrcc.org/martha-robertson-congress/contribute/, where, confusingly, underneath a decently sized banner that says “Martha Robertson for Congress,” the text asks you to “Make a contribution today to help defeat Martha Robertson and candidates like her.” It’s unlikely that an imposter (i.e. not the NRCC) would be able to concoct a page at the NRCC website.

The headline and subhead of Goldmacher’s article is “Republican Look-Alike Sites Mocking Democrats May Violate Rules / Could targeted Democrats get the last laugh when it comes to anti-candidate microsites?” Goldmacher quoted Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign watchdog group, to the effect that the websites constitute a violation of election law: “This doesn’t even strike me as a close call. It’s a slam dunk.” Additionally, Goldmacher similarly cited Larry Noble, a former general counsel of the FEC and now the head of a bipartisan Americans for Campaign Reform: “Part of their attempt is to sow confusion and draw people there who would be looking for the candidate’s website. All the candidate has is their name.” One of the problems with the Federal Election Commission is that their investigations are measured in years, not weeks. By the time they administer a ruling, the damage has already been done.

Pareene says that the Republicans have taken out Google Ads intended to direct Internet users to the fake sites:

As of now, there are at least six of these fake sites, all promoted with Google ads to make them appear at the very top of searches, with that barely legible yellow background (denoting paid links) that Google hopes you don’t notice. At least one person accidentally donated to the RNC while intending to donate to a Democratic candidate. The NRCC agreed to refund his donation, but obviously people who never realize they were tricked won’t ask for refunds. It may not be quite Nixonian, but yes, solid dirty trick, NRCC.

My attempts to generate these Google Ads on Google did not meet with success, which suggests at least the possibility that Google itself has intervened.

Curiously, the NRCC isn’t even bothering to deny the charges—it’s bragging about the technique. Last September Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Georgia, deputy chairman of the NRCC, bragged in a fundraising pitch to donors:

We ruined three Democrats’ campaign launches last week and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (Pelosi’s campaign machine) couldn’t be more upset.

1. Democrat John Lewis announced he was running for Congress in Montana, but we bought JohnLewis4Congress.com beforehand and have made sure that anyone who searches for him online ends up visiting our site instead.

The Democrats didn’t see that coming. In fact, they were so caught off-guard that Lewis still doesn’t have his own campaign website up yet!

2. We also did this to the Democratic candidate in West Virginia’s 3rd District with NickRahallForCongress.com.

3. Last but not least, we beat the Democrats to the punch by buying EldridgeForCongress2014.com before Sean Eldridge even launched his own campaign! The Democrats desperately want to win back New York’s 19th Congressional District but thanks to this it’s not going well.

The Republicans have been behaving like a a goon squad for quite a few years now. We don’t have to rehash every step of the way since the Monica Lewinsky coup/impeachment and Bush-Gore 2000 to be confident in the truth of that assessment. There will come a day when even conservatives try to win on the issues. But it looks like we’ll have to wait a while for that day.

I couldn’t find any video on this yet, but here’s a similar story from 2012 with no apparent partisan value, in which regular scammers imitated the official web presences of the two major parties for a much more basic reason: greed.

The Cruz to the Future™ coloring book is suitable for any student desk in America, as millions of people across the country admire, respect and portray Mr. Cruz as a positive role model for children, stated publisher Wayne Bell. Parents have told our company they enjoy modern day heroes and positive role models in children’s literature and Mr. Cruz as a sitting U.S. Senator certainly meets the criteria,” continued Bell.

RBCB created this comic coloring and activity book not as an endorsement of Sen. Ted Cruz but rather as an educational tool to be used in schools and perhaps as a handout for groups, clubs and organizations.

It’s reasonably priced at only $4.99. I guarantee you’ll have hours and hours of enjoyment defacing the fuck out of this not trying to color outside the strict Republican lines.

A recent poll taken of Republican voters in Louisiana revealed something… well… something kind of stupid: A significant portion of them think that Obama deserves the blame for Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in 2005! In fact, more Louisiana Republicans blame Obama than… George Bush!

The latest survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, provided exclusively to TPM, showed an eye-popping divide among Republicans in the Bayou State when it comes to accountability for the government’s post-Katrina blunders.

Twenty-eight percent said they think former President George W. Bush, who was in office at the time, was more responsible for the poor federal response while 29 percent said Obama, who was still a freshman U.S. Senator when the storm battered the Gulf Coast in 2005, was more responsible. Nearly half of Louisiana Republicans — 44 percent — said they aren’t sure who to blame.

Bush was criticized heavily when he did not immediately return to Washington from his vacation in Texas after the storm had reached landfall. The government was also slow to provide relief aid and Michael Brown, then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), admitted in a televised interview that he learned that many of the storm’s victims at the New Orleans Convention Center were without food and water well after the situation had been reported in the press.

Former FEMA director Brown’s handling of the federal agency’s incompetent emergency response to Katrina ultimately led to his resignation.

The polls’ results, and the indication that a sizable portion of Louisiana Republicans must be as dumb as cud-chewing cows, is not exactly a jaw-dropping revelation—after all it was the state’s goofy-ass, deeply unpopular Republican governor Bobby Jindal who coined that “stupid party” moniker to describe his own political brethren (and he should know, he appealed to these ignoramuses for their votes!)—but still.

Talk about a short—not to mention, faulty—memory these Republicans must have. Better than a goldfish, but by how much?

Outgoing GOP crazypants Rep. Michele Bachmann of MN seems to have accidentally taken some sodium pentothal before sitting down for this recent interview with WorldNutDaily. In it, Rep. Bachmann states, with no equivocating (as is her wont), that if immigration reform passes, there will never again be a Republican President or a GOP ruled Senate and that they’ll eventually lose the House for good, too.

Oh, how I love these rare moments of Republican candor! But Bachmann, as true as what she is saying really is, misses the equally valid flip-side of her statement: If immigration fails to pass, there won’t be another Republican President ever again either! Win/win!!!

The Republicans, are, of course, fucked in every respect and they have only themselves—and their staggeringly stupid brand of politics—to blame. Instead they’re probably just going to point the finger at “Mexican anchor babies,” but to no avail.

You snooze you lose. For the politically tin-eared Rip Van Winkles of the Republican Party, it’s already too late.

But that’s no going to stop Reps. Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert who are reportedly planning a revolt in the House over immigration reform legislation forcing additional debate (likely to prove highly embarrassing with those three clownjobs leading the charge) on the immigration bill they say will have “dire consequences for the country.”

The minute immigration reform gets passed, you can put a fork in the Grand Old Party. Even the reddest of redneck states will start turning blue very, very quickly and there is nothing the Republicans can do about it, either. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. These assholes are staring down a demographic tidal wave that is going to DROWN THEM.

Admittedly, although a one-party rule by the Democrats doesn’t sound like much of a prize—it has been pretty great for California, though, hasn’t it?—that party will be increasingly easier to reason with once the GOP—so pathologically impervious to reason, obviously—has suffered continuing electoral humiliation and diminishment at the vote of a rapidly changing American electorate.

A revised Republican National Committee schedule released Monday showed a mystery “To Be Announced” speaker would take the stage just before Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday night. Even the Romney campaign said that they didn’t know who it would be.

During a Wednesday report, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher speculated on some of the possibilities. They included Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Clint Eastwood and NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

But Gallagher also threw out the name of the former president as potential speaker.

“Maybe a hologram of… Ronald Reagan,” he predicted. “They could do it now with technology. And the word is, maybe they just put Ronald Reagan up on the screen using a little bit of media magic to have Ronald Reagan endorse [Mitt Romney].”

You have to love it if someone at the RNC was inspired by the hologram Tupac at the Coachella Festival to reanimate the Gipper. Life in the 21st century sure is great ain’t it? Guy DeBord would puke in his mouth to see such a spectacle, but I still hope this will come to pass. If Reagan fails to materialize like a demon onstage in Tampa tomorrow night, I shall be bitterly disappointed!

(Another theory is that the mystery speaker is Clint Eastwood. Have you seen the reality show Mrs. Eastwood & Company on the E! network with his awful wife and spoiled brat daughter? Tell me that he’s not going senile. He’d have to be!)

The REAL hunger games have begun in the Capitol: This week the House is voting on $36 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance, or SNAP, which would kick 2 million people off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), reduce benefits for 44 million more, and drop 280,000 low-income kids from school lunch.

Visit Half in Ten to learn more—and how you can stop the Capitol from winning.

France handed the presidency on Sunday to François Hollande, who declared that “austerity can no longer be inevitable.” In Greece, Germany and Italy, parliamentary and local elections Sunday were seen as setbacks for austerity measures. Sen. Bernie Sanders saw a lesson for the United States in the European elections.

“In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well. The message sent by voters in France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families.

In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country.”

It was announced in a press conference yesterday that US Marshals have crossed another name off the “America’s Most Wanted” list, a man known variously as “Bobby Thompson,” “Anderson Yazzie” and “Ronnie Brittain,” who is accused of creating a fake veterans charity that funneled money to state and national Republican candidates, including President George Bush, Senator John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner

U.S. Marshals captured “Thompson” late Monday evening in Portland, OR. outside of Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub with a backpack full of cash and fake IDs. Authorities say that they still don’t know what their captive’s real name is—he signed the booking sheet at the jail with an “X”—and the former fugitive is refusing to talk. Investigators tracked “Thompson” across eight states before he was apprehended. 99% of the $100 million is unaccounted for.

Between the early 2000s and 2010, a man using the alias “Bobby Thompson” collected millions from unsuspecting donors for the charity U.S. Navy Veterans Association (USNVA), which claimed to provide support for members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Officials believe that very little, if any, of the money was ever used as intended, according to the U.S. Marshal Service.

To help legitimize his charity, Thompson allegedly donated part of the ill-gotten funds to Republican candidates like former President George W. Bush, former Republican presidential candidate John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner.

Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli reportedly personally pleaded with Thompson for donations and received $55,000 for his effort, making Thompson Cuccinelli’s second-largest donor. Cuccinelli was eventually forced to turn over the tainted money to veterans support groups.

Over the years, Thompson also attended the 2008 Republican National Convention and numerous fundraisers. The Roanoke Times obtained photos of Thompson posing with Bush, Boehner and McCain — as well as Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL), former Bush adviser Karl Rove and former Republican New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Thompson fled in 2010 after learning of a criminal investigation in several states. He was later charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, identity theft, fraud and money laundering.

“Thompson” is currently being held in the Multnomah County Jail and is expected to be extradited shortly to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where he was first indicted.